Stirring Up Murder

by P. D. Workman

  Vic nodded. “Good. Because I think we’d need at least another three people to stock the grocery store. If they sold well. And if they didn’t, then all of our work would be for nothing. Not really a good business plan.”

  “Yes. I think we need to keep it to what you, me, and Bella can do for now. I can’t really afford to be paying for more staff.”

  “Yeah.”

  Erin paused, tapping her pen to her chin. She looked sideways at Vic. “Has Bella used the commode yet?”

  Vic laughed. “She won’t even look at the door to the stairs, let alone go downstairs and use the loo. Don’t bother asking her to run downstairs to get you something, unless it’s just because you want to see that panic-stricken look on her face.”

  “I’ve told her that there isn’t anything scary down there. Everything has been cleaned up, and it isn’t like it was a horrible bloody death in the first place. It was really a very clean murder, when you think about it.”

  “Yeah… but I don’t think she cares how bloody it was. It’s the ghosts.”

  “There are no ghosts.”

  “She’s sure Angela Plaint is down there, if not the entire Plaint clan. Doesn’t matter that their bodies have been properly buried in consecrated ground. She’s convinced that their spirits are stuck downstairs.”

  Erin shook her head. “I suppose I should be glad she even agreed to work for us. It’s amazing she would even come into the bakery, if she’s that terrified of restless spirits.”

  “You shouldn’t mock what you don’t understand,” Vic warned.

  She said it deadpan, and Erin studied her, trying to figure out if she was joking or serious. Even though Vic said she didn’t believe in magic or ghosts or anything other than God and spirits either going to heaven or hell, her actions suggested she wasn’t quite so sure. Erin decided to drop the subject altogether and go on.

  “Where was I?” She scanned her notes. “Right. No more staff. Not yet. But I was thinking about the restaurants. How when Davis went to the family restaurant while I was there, he was so disgusted that they were using store-bought, mass-produced white buns. He said that when he got The Bake Shoppe reopened, he would talk to them about a contract to supply them with good quality buns and bread.”

  Vic nodded. “That would be nice. The store-bought stuff just doesn’t measure up to handmade. But wouldn’t that be just as much work as supplying the grocery store?”

  “I don’t think so. Not if we’re careful. We can start just by supplying them with a gluten-free option. They can have frozen buns and other bread products available for when someone orders them. Then we can look at offering them an upgrade on their meals. You can have turkey salad on brown bread, or you could pay a dollar fifty more and get it on an artisanal multigrain, handcrafted, bun.”

  “Work our way in.”

  “Right. People get exposed to it as an upgrade over regular bread instead of thinking of gluten-free as an inferior replacement. They maybe decide that was a really good bread and stop by Auntie Clem’s to pick up a loaf when they’ve got company over. And we can scale it over time. There’s more room for profit if it’s a premium product. We can see how it is succeeding before we have to scale up our man hours.”

  “Does that mean—”

  The doorbell rang. Erin looked at the clock and got up. As she walked into the living room, Orange Blossom was jumping up onto the couch to stick his head out through the curtains and have a look to see who had arrived. He meowed loudly a few times.

  “Who is it, Blossom?” Erin asked him. “Is it our friend Terry?”

  She looked out the peep hole and saw that it was. She opened the door to let Terry and K9 in. Orange Blossom promptly arched his back and frizzed out his fur, hissing at K9 as if he were a dangerous intruder, instead of a friend that visited them regularly several evenings a week. Erin laughed and shook her head.

  “Don’t pay him any attention. Come on in; have you had anything to eat?”

  She knew that even if he’d had supper, he would still have bread and jam, so they automatically headed for the kitchen table. Vic swiped Erin’s papers into a pile and put them on the sideboard.

  “Look who’s here. How’s it going, Officer Piper?”

  Terry grinned at her. “Everything is fine, Miss Victoria.”

  Erin shook her head at their mock formality and got out some leftover buns from the bakery and a selection of Jam Lady condiments.

  “I searched that name for you,” Terry said, after a couple of bites of bread. He wiped crumbs from his mouth. “Did a little bit of background on her.”

  Erin felt like her heart would stop. She put her hand over her chest and forced herself to breathe. She knew that Terry was waiting for a proper answer from her, but she was unable to formulate one right away. She got K9 a biscuit from the cookie jar and handed it to him. K9 lay down with it between his paws to eat it. Orange Blossom was sitting in the doorway watching him with haughty disapproval.

  Marshmallow lolloped past Orange Blossom and circled the kitchen. K9 looked up and gave a little woof of interest, which Marshmallow ignored. He acted as if he had no idea that dogs and rabbits were naturally predator and prey, acting instead as if K9 were just another piece of furniture. He approached Erin and snuffled at her pant leg.

  “You want a treat too?” Erin asked him, laughing. She got a stick of celery out of the fridge for him, and soon Marshmallow was crunching away at it. Erin looked at Orange Blossom. “What about you, silly cat, are you going to ask for a treat?”

  Orange Blossom hunched his shoulders, a quiver running down his back, and disdained Erin. She shrugged.

  “Oh, well.”

  Terry and Vic were both looking at Erin. Terry took another bite of bun. “Did you hear what I said?”

  “Who did she ask you to look up?” Vic asked, when Erin didn’t answer right away. “That name she got from the reunion bulletin board?”

  Terry nodded. “Charlotte Campbell,” he pronounced. “Do you want to know?”

  Erin sighed. She swallowed, hoping her stomach would stay still and not misbehave. “I suppose.”

  Terry pulled out his notepad and flipped back to find the right page. Erin doubted that he actually needed to look at it to tell her what he had found. It was not complicated.

  “The birth date matches. That’s really the only thing we have that shows it could be her. Everything else on the birth certificate changes with her adoption. We can’t tell what her birth name or place were. You’d have to go back to the court documents to hopefully find out more details there.”

  “So it’s a ‘maybe,’” Erin observed. “It could be her. But it could be someone else who just happens to have the same birth date too. And there’s bound to be a few of those in Tennessee.”

  “Right. It’s a good starting place, but you’ll have to find out more information to prove anything.”

  “Are you going to contact her?” Vic asked.

  Erin knew she should sit down at the table to join Vic and Terry, but she was too anxious to sit still. She pretended instead that she was just standing up to watch the animals and get them their food.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You have to at least contact her to see if she’s the right person. And if she is… you’ll want some kind of relationship with her, won’t you? You’ll want to get together and compare notes,” Vic persisted.

  “I’m not sure.”

  Terry frowned. Both Vic and Erin caught the subtle tightening of his mouth and wrinkle between his brows.

  “What is it?” Erin asked.

  “I told you I did a little background. More than just pulling up her DMV to check her date of birth.”

  Erin took a couple steps closer to the table. Her voice was lower, like it was a secret and she didn’t want anyone else to overhear, when it was just the three of them and the animals.

  “What else?”

  “She has a record. Just petty stuff.”

  “Anyone could
have a record…”

  “Anyone could,” Terry agreed. The way he looked at Erin made her wonder again just how much he knew from her past. She had used different names in different places, across several states, and he had told her once that he’d had trouble following the thread, just as Alton had.

  “But…?” It was Vic who prompted Terry to go on. Erin wasn’t at all sure she wanted him to. She didn’t want to know what kind of trouble Charlotte had been in. She didn’t want to hear that the whole thing was just a scam. What would be the point in pretending to be someone’s long-lost half-sister? It wasn’t like Erin was rolling in dough. Well—maybe she was rolling in dough, but not in cash. Terry’s sharp eyes caught Erin’s brief smile, and he cocked his head slightly, trying to analyze it. Erin didn’t fill him in on her erratic train of thought.

  “Charlotte Campbell has some involvement with an organized crime family here in Tennessee.”

  Erin suppressed a curse. She took a couple of slow, even breaths. “You have organized crime here? I thought most of the crime in these parts was just vandals and moonshiners. Nothing serious.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, it’s no mafia. But there are a number of families that have been involved in some pretty nasty stuff for a number of generations… as far back as the civil war, some of them.”

  “Which one is this Charlotte part of?” Vic demanded.

  “Dysons.”

  Vic, her complexion naturally fair, went a shade whiter. “The Dyson Clan? How did she get involved with them?”

  “I don’t know. There’s only so much information I can get from official sources.”

  “You don’t want to get involved with this,” Vic told Erin firmly. “She’s probably not really your sister, but even if she is… stay away from her. You don’t want to get tangled up somehow with the Dyson clan.”

  Erin felt the first stirrings of curiosity, but also something else. One of her foster mothers had observed once, ‘if you want Erin to do something, the surest way to get her to do it is to tell her not to.’ Rebellion rose up in her at Vic’s words. Charlotte was Erin’s sister. If Charlotte were in trouble, maybe Erin could help her out. How bad could some backwoods Tennessee family really be?

  “They’re not really organized crime,” she asserted, even though she knew nothing more about them than what Terry had just said. They were just an old Tennessee family with a bad reputation.

  “Maybe not like The Godfather,” Vic said, “but they’re still some nasty people with deep connections all over these parts.”

  “You didn’t say there was anything serious in her background,” Erin said to Terry. “Right? Just minor stuff.”

  “Yes… but being involved with these people… there may be a lot more going on than has made it to her official record.”

  “But you don’t know that. And you don’t know how she’s involved with these guys. She might have been adopted by someone in this Dyson family, right? She can’t help that and it doesn’t mean she’s a bad person.”

  “No one is saying she’s a bad person,” Terry said, holding up one hand to stop her. “What we’re saying…” He looked at Vic to make sure they were on the same page. “…is just that you don’t want to get involved with this family.”

  “So you think I shouldn’t contact her? That I shouldn’t meet her, just because of the family she is in?”

  Terry looked again at Vic, squirming. It was unusual for him to be at a loss for words. “I don’t know, Erin. I wouldn’t want you to get mixed up in anything.”

  “Just by talking to her and finding out if she’s really my sister?”

  “It sounds perfectly safe, I know. But I’ve seen innocent encounters turn into something else. I’d hate to see you get hurt.”

  “These are bad guys, Erin,” Vic chimed in. “I grew up around them. Knowing who they were and what things they were involved in. Maybe it’s not the mafia, but they’re the closest you’re going to get to it in these parts.”

  “You’re the one who’s been telling me I should get in touch with my sister. That I should do whatever I could to find her and not just forget about it. You were the one talking to me about how she was going to be like me, she was going to have more in common with me than any random friend. So if she’s like me, she’s not going to be involved in anything dishonest, right?”

  “I don’t think you can go that far. I don’t think you can be sure. Not if she’s been raised by these guys.”

  Erin shook her head in frustration. She looked at Terry. “You must know something. Was she raised by them? Or does she have some other connection with them?”

  “All I can tell by what I was able to pull up was that these convictions on her record are gang-related. She is associated with the Dyson clan. Whether that means that she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, or that she’s actually a member of the family, I can’t tell.”

  Erin threw herself into her work at the bakery. If there was one thing she was good at, it was avoidance. She didn’t know yet what to do with the information that her sister might be in some organized crime family, so she ignored the issue and pretended not to care. Vic didn’t say anything to her about it, but Erin knew from Vic’s glances when she thought Erin wasn’t looking that Vic still wanted to talk to Erin more about it, to persuade her that the best course of action was just to leave Charlotte Campbell alone.

  Erin looked up at the jingle of bells on the front door, and saw Mrs. Foster, Peter’s mother. She had Traci, the baby, with her, but it was afternoon and the other children were still at school. Traci started begging for a cookie, and Erin got one out from the display case and handed it to her so that she and Mrs. Foster would be able to talk.

  “She’s getting to be such a big girl!”

  “She sure is,” Mrs. Foster said. “She’s growing like a weed. It’s a good thing we have lots of hand-me-downs, or I’d have trouble keeping her in clothes!”

  Erin packaged up the bread and other baked goods that Mrs. Foster selected. “Do you find that your kids are a lot alike?” she asked. “Do they share a lot of traits and interests?”

  “Lands, no. They all come with their own unique personalities. Peter was never like this little one. He’s the firstborn, and firstborns are always a little bit of a perfectionist, you know. He had a lot of health issues, but when he was feeling well, he was always quiet and eager to please. He’s such a mature little man now. The little girls, they’re more like each other than like Peter. Karen and Jody are so close in age, they’re almost like twins. Take their cues from each other. They’re both girly girls, all into fashion and Barbies. This one,” Mrs. Foster adjusted Traci on her hip, “I think she’s going to be a little tomboy. She’s far more interested in trucks and climbing and creepy-crawlies than in dolls or dresses.”

  She picked out some muffins and Erin went over to the till to ring up the purchases. Vic was in the kitchen, taking some fresh buns out of the oven.

  “Why do you ask?” Mrs. Foster asked. “Just idle curiosity?”

  “Oh… I don’t know. I just wonder what it would be like to have a sister, I guess. What it would be like to find out that I have one now. If we didn’t grow up together, if we weren’t playmates like your little girls, then how much alike would we be?”

  “You never can tell.” Mrs. Foster shook her head unhelpfully. “Some siblings are so different, you’d never believe they were even related to each other. Others… they’re so much alike in looks and in the way they act, you know without even being told that they’re from the same family.”

  Vic returned to the front of the store. She smiled and greeted Mrs. Foster and Traci. Erin made change for the purchase, but her brain was rabbiting off in a new direction. What about looks? Would her long-lost sister be dark-haired like she was? Or would she be a blond or even a redhead? Erin’s mother had brown hair, and so did Adam Plaint, so Erin assumed their child would have as well. Would she have the same delicate facial features as Erin and her mother? Or th
e coarser, more chiseled look that Adam and his sons had? Terry must have seen mugshots of Charlotte if he’d looked at her police record, but he hadn’t said a word about whether the woman looked similar to Erin or not. Wouldn’t Terry have said something if they looked remarkably like each other?

  “Erin?”

  Erin brought her attention back to Mrs. Foster. “Oh. Sorry. What?”

  “I just wanted to thank you again for all of the Christmas treats. Peter was just in heaven to have a whole platter of different kinds of cookies and sweets to choose from this year instead of one bag of store-bought gluten-free cookies. It was so nice for him to be just like anyone else.”

  “You’re welcome. I’m glad I could make it special for him. I remember my sister… my foster sister that was celiac. She always felt so left out. She would sneak foods that she knew were bad for her because she wanted so much to be a part of the social experience. She wanted to be just like everyone else instead of being left out and forced to eat unappetizing substitutes, if anyone even thought of her.”

  Mrs. Foster shook her head. “I can’t imagine. I’m so sorry she had to go through that. I’ve tried to do everything I could to make things normal and happy for Peter. Staying up late at night after putting a fussy baby to bed, just to make him a half-decent loaf of bread.”

  Erin nodded. Her foster parents hadn’t worked that hard to make Carolyn feel normal. Maybe a biological parent, one like Mrs. Foster, would have been able to reach her.

  “I’m always happy to do something for Peter.”

  The bells tinkled again and, looking up, Erin saw Clara Jones enter. Erin looked at Vic in disbelief. Clara had only been in the bakery once or twice before, and then only to cause trouble.

  Vic shrugged. She greeted Clara pleasantly, but her expression was guarded. Neither one of them had any expectation that Clara was there to buy a dozen cookies for the police department, where she worked as a part-time administrator for Terry, the sheriff, and Tom Banks.